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On the stand
Hundreds of school leaders stopped by to talk, and almost every single one of them told us a version of the same story.
Too many systems. Too much manual work. Not enough visibility. Not enough time.
Over 100 schools, academies and trusts left their details to continue the conversation after the show and find out what Access Evo for Education can do for their organisation across Financial Management, People Operations, Curriculum and Assessment, and Parental Engagement. One connected platform. One place where education just flows.
One of the products drawing real attention was our brand new Access Education Purchasing software, built for finance teams who are done with chasing approvals, manually processing invoices and having no clear picture of where money is being spent. It is one more piece of the connected picture, and it resonated.
Our Wheel of Fortune did not stop spinning all day, with 56 prizes won on the day, including one lucky winner who bagged a staff room bundle worth £150.
But if you asked our team what they will remember most about the day, it would not be the prizes. It was the moment visitors saw what connected education actually looks like in practice. The pause. The recognition. The "we need this."
That was the energy on the stand.
What the sector is really talking about
The programme across the day painted a picture of a sector under real pressure, but also one that is asking the right questions.
AI featured heavily, but the most important message was not about technology itself. It came from a keynote by Dr Nisreen Ameen of Royal Holloway University of London, presenting research conducted in partnership with Skills England. Her finding was clear and worth sitting with: schools cannot confidently teach AI skills to pupils until the teachers themselves feel confident. Educator upskilling has to come first. The organisations that have invested in that early are already seeing around four hours a week in productivity gains per person. Not from the technology alone. From the confidence to use it well.
That thread ran straight into a panel session on responsible EdTech adoption, where school leaders and researchers pushed back hard on the idea that technology solves problems by itself. Culture, trust and leadership buy-in have to come before any tool is introduced. AI implementation, the panel argued plainly, tends to falter when it is driven by a tech lead rather than the headteacher. The human decision has to come first.
A safeguarding session rounded out the day, with six panellists from trusts across the sector examining how the demands of modern safeguarding have outpaced the structures built to support it. DSL workload, student voice and the risks created by AI-generated content all featured. The honest acknowledgement in the room was that training which simply ticks a box changes very little. Safeguarding requires real capacity, real time and real connection between people.
The thread running through all three sessions was the same one we hear in almost every conversation we have with education leaders.
Capacity is the limiting factor. Not effort. Not intention. But the structural weight of systems and processes that were never designed to work together.
Which is exactly what brought us to the Business and Finance Theatre that afternoon.
Breaking down silos: the panel discussion
Nearly 100 people registered for this session, "Increasing Capacity and Capability by Breaking Down Silos." The room was full, and the conversation was the kind you leave still thinking about on the drive home.
Our General Manager, Jonny Cowlin, chaired a discussion that cut straight to the operational reality facing trusts today. Joining him were Emma Slater, Director of Product at Access Education and a former senior leader and Head of English with over a decade working in schools; Matt McIver, Chief Operating Officer at Cidari Multi Academy Trust, leading operations across 15 schools; Abbie Martin, Transformation and Projects Lead at Nexus Multi Academy Trust, with more than 20 years in education leadership; and Julie Lombardo, Deputy Chief Executive at E-ACT, an experienced finance and executive leader across multiple trusts.
The panel talked openly about what it actually costs when finance, HR, operations and education teams are working from different systems with different data. Not just the time lost to admin and duplication. But the slower decisions, the reduced visibility and the drag on strategic thinking that builds up quietly over time until it becomes the norm.
The most important reframe of the whole session was also the simplest.
Trusts are struggling because their systems do not work together. That is a structural problem. Which means it is a solvable one.
When data connects, budgets link directly to staffing and curriculum. Teams stop re-entering the same information twice. Leaders see what is happening in real time rather than looking back at last month's report. And the capacity that was quietly being consumed by friction gets redirected to the things that actually matter.
Jonny brought the session to a close with a line that captured everything the room had been working towards:
This isn't about working harder. It's about creating the conditions where work flows more effectively across the organisation. And when finance, operations and education are more connected, you don't just reduce friction. You create capacity, clarity and confidence at every level of the trust.
Connected education is not a future vision. It is already happening.
Every conversation on the stand, every hand raised in that session, every question put to the panel was a signal from someone trying to do right by their school, their staff and their pupils.
The schools and trusts that are moving towards connected ways of working are already seeing what becomes possible. Admin that once consumed hours shrinks away. Decisions that used to take days happen in the same meeting. Teams that were pulling in different directions start working from the same picture.
Access Evo for Education is the platform making that happen. It brings together finance, people operations, curriculum and parental engagement in one intelligent ecosystem, so that data flows where it is needed, complexity gives way to clarity and leaders can focus on what exceptional education actually requires. Schools using Access Education are reducing their admin burden by up to 80%. Not as a headline. As a reality.
Every part of the platform delivers on its own. Financial Management. People Operations. Parental Engagement. Curriculum and Assessment. But the real transformation comes when they work together, giving you a single connected view of your organisation whether you run one school or a trust of twenty.
To everyone who came to find us
Thank you. To every person who stopped by the stand, attended the session, spun the wheel or simply shared what is genuinely hard about their role right now. These conversations are not background noise to us. They shape everything we build.
Whether you were at the show or not, we would love to continue the conversation. Get in touch to find out what connected education could look like for your school, academy or trust.
